An online media provider may offer users access to digital copies of works of authorship (herein collectively referred to as “media works” and/or “media content”) to users on a per-work and/or subscription basis through a digital media distribution system. The works of authorship may, for example, include sound recordings, musical works, motion picture works (or other audiovisual works), pictorial works, graphic works, literary works, dramatic works, choreographic works, and the like. Common examples of media works provided by an online media provider are digital audio recordings of songs and/or digital audiovisual recordings of films and/or television episodes.
An online media provider may utilize a client/server model to implement its digital media distribution system. A client/server model is a distributed computing application structure that partitions tasks and/or workloads between servers and client devices (a client device broadly refers to a piece of computer hardware that makes requests to a server). The server is often (but is not required to be) located at a remote location with respect to the client device, in which case the client may access the remote server's services by way of a network. A server may host (or run) one or more computer programs, referred to herein as services, which provide resources upon request to a computer program operating on a client device, referred to herein as a client application. A client application may request a service to provide the client application with content or to perform a function on behalf of the client application, but is typically not required to share any of its local resources with the service. Clients therefore typically initiate communication sessions with servers which await incoming requests via the network.
In the context of a digital media distribution system, a user operating a client device, such as a personal computer or a mobile phone, may run a client media application and access a media distribution service running on a remote server operated by the online media provider. Collectively, the client media application and the media distribution service may enable a user to:
(1) browse media content, including media content the user has already purchased and/or licensed from the online media provider, as well as new media content available from the online media provider's catalog of media works and
(2) selectively interact with particular media works and/or sets of media works.